Case of Murder On Death Row Goes to Jury

Published: June 22, 2001

FREEHOLD, N.J., June 21—
A lawyer for a prisoner on death row who is charged with killing a fellow inmate told a jury today that his client had acted in self-defense in the jail attack.

The prisoner, Ambrose Harris, fatally beat the other inmate, Robert Simon, in response to an unprovoked attack that in such grim confines implied a fight to the death, said the lawyer, Robert F. Gold.

But the prosecutor in the case said in his closing argument that Mr. Harris had brutally murdered Mr. Simon by punching, kicking and stomping on his face, long after the victim had stopped moving, to send a message to the state's 15 other condemned men that he was a tough man.

Jurors in State Superior Court deliberated for two hours today without reaching a verdict. They may decide that Mr. Harris is guilty of murder, not guilty by reason of self-defense, or guilty of something in between, a lesser crime known as passion/provocation manslaughter.

On Sept. 7, 1999, Mr. Harris, who was sentenced to death for the 1992 murder of a Pennsylvania art student, fatally beat Mr. Simon, who was condemned to die for the 1997 killing of a Gloucester County police officer. Mr. Harris and Mr. Simon had been placed in a recreation cage together on death row in Trenton State Prison.

Mr. Gold said in an interview that in his preparation for trial, he could find no other case in the country in which one death-row inmate was charged with murdering another.

In his summation to the jury, Mr. Gold referred to earlier testimony by an expert on prison life, Craig Haney, a psychology professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

''As Dr. Haney said so eloquently, when you have been confined in prison for as long as Mr. Harris had, for as long as Mr. Simon had, when you have an encounter like that, it is a lethal encounter,'' Mr. Gold said.

The Mercer County prosecutor, Daniel G. Giaquinto, ridiculed Dr. Haney's testimony and stressed in graphic detail the brutality of the beating.

Photos: Ambrose Harris, left, and Robert Simon were both on death row when Mr. Harris fatally beat Mr. Simon. Mr. Harris says he acted in self-defense. (Photographs by Associated Press)